Doris Lessing - The Good Terrorist

‘Then how can they come and live here, Alice?’ said Bert, firm but kind.

‘I don’t think she’s anything much, at the moment. Ideologically. And anyway,’ Alice persisted, courageously, knowing what this argument of hers had cost her in the past, earning her all kinds of accusations, ‘in a sense, aren’t we? After all, we don’t say that Trotsky never existed! We give him full credit for his achievements. We say that it was Lenin who was the real workers’ Leader, and then the comrades there took a wrong turning with Stalin. If saying that Trotsky was a good comrade and he took the wrong turning makes you a Trot, then I don’t see why we aren’t? Anyway, I don’t seem to remember we actually defined our line on Trotsky. Not in the CCU, anyway.’

‘Oh Alice,’ said Jasper, with the finality of superiority, ‘ideology is simply not your line.’

‘Well,’ said Pat, having exchanged efficient looks with Bert, ‘I for one don’t think this is the moment to define our attitude to Comrade Trotsky. There is something in what Alice says. That’s not the point. My point is that this business of having a nice clean house and a roof over our heads is beginning to define us. It is what we do. ’

‘It’s taken four days,’ said Alice, ‘four days,’ and she was appealing for justice.

‘Yes, but now it looks as if we are going to have two new people here just to keep the house.’

Jim said, ‘Why don’t we ask them to join the CCU? I’m going to join.’

‘Well, why not?’ said Bert, after a considerable pause. Alice saw him and Jasper exchange a long thoughtful look. She knew they were thinking that perhaps they should go next door to ask someone, who ? for advice. Or instruction.

She said, ‘We must decide tonight. The meeting is tomorrow.’ And now she did have her look. Her voice told her so; and told the others, who turned to see how she sat swelling and suffering there.

Bert and Jasper still sat gazing at each other in an abstracted way. What they were doing, in fact, was playing back in their minds what had been said by someone next door, and wondering how to fit this situation into it.

Bert said, ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t ask them to join. We keep saying we want to recruit. It sounds to me as if these two might be ripe. With a bit of political education…’ And on these words he and Jasper got up, as one, and went out, Jasper remarking, ‘We’ll be back in a minute.’

Pat said, ‘And I’m off. I’m off to visit someone.’

‘But don’t you want to meet Mary and Reggie?’

Pat shrugged, smiled and left. Alice was reminded – as, she was sure, Pat had intended – that Pat did not really care, was going to leave anyway.

Remained Alice and Jim and Philip.

Soon in came Mary, with a man of whom Alice found herself thinking, at first glance, Well, of course! – meaning that he and Mary were a pair. Not in looks, for he was a tall, knobbly-looking man, with very white skin, small black eyes under strong black brows, and dense, very fine black hair. He would be bald early. Where he matched with Mary was in an air of measure, of common sense ordered by what was due. Due, that is, to their surroundings, their fellows, to society. Alice was looking, and she knew it, at respectability. It was not that she did not value this type of good sense; but it was not the kind of sense that would be appropriate here, in this household. It was with an infinite feeling of tolerance she allowed that other people had need of these struts and supports. She was thinking, Good God, they were born to be two nice little bourgeois in a nice little house. They’ll be worrying about their pensions next.

Seeing them together, she felt, simply, that a mistake was being made. They should not be here. Alone with Mary, she liked her. Seeing her with her mate Reggie, Alice felt alienated, with the beginnings of a strong hostility.

‘Sit down,’ she smiled. And she put the saucepan on the stove and switched on the electricity. A pity, a gas stove would be so much better. Well, they would find one on a skip, or even get a reconditioned one for ten pounds or so.

She turned to see Reggie examining Jim, and thought, With a bit of luck he’s colour-prejudiced, and won’t want to be here. But no such luck, he seemed to like Jim. Or, if he didn’t like blacks, his manner said nothing about that. Of course, thought Alice, this lot, the bloody middle classes, you’d find out nothing from their manner, politeness is all. But no, it was genuine, she was pretty sure of it; body-language – a skill Alice had been equipped with by instinct, long before there was a name for it – told her that Reggie was all right about colour, at least. She sat listening to them talk, everything easy, Reggie with Jim, Mary with Philip. She made mugs of coffee and set before them a plate of cake.

Chat. How she, Alice, had fixed things with Electricity, and would with the Gas Board. The Water Board of course would be told. Alice did not say that the Water Board would not catch up with them for months and that she had no intention of attracting their attention. These two were bill-payers and keepers of accounts.

She said, to warn them, ‘I have lived in a lot of squats, and you’ll have to accept it, some people don’t pull their weight. They just don’t.’

At this Jim said, hurt, ‘Until you came there wasn’t anything to pay, was there?’ and she said, ‘No, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about the situation. It’s no good these two moving in and expecting everything to be regular.’

Mary said, ‘But with so many people here, it will still be cheaper than anything else could possibly be, with no rent.’

‘Exactly,’ said Reggie. And came straight to his point, with, ‘Tell us about the CCU? You know, we’ve never heard of it. Mary and I were talking in the pub. It didn’t ring a bell with either of us.’

‘Well, it’s not a very big party, really,’ said Alice. ‘But it’s growing. When we started it, we never meant it to be a mass party, we don’t want it to be. These mass parties, they lose touch with the people.’

‘Well, that’s true enough,’ said Reggie, but he said it carefully, as though he could have said other things; and Alice thought: He and Mary are going to exchange glances…They didn’t, but only with an effort so obvious she thought contemptuously: People are so amazing. They exchange glances as if no one can see them, and they don’t know how they give themselves away…anyone can read what people are thinking.

Reggie: ‘The CCU – the Communist Centre Union?’

‘Centre, because we wanted to show we were not left deviants or revisionists.’

‘Union – two parties joined, two groups?’

‘No, a union of viewpoints, you see. No hair-splitting. We didn’t want any of that.’

‘And you started the CCU?’

‘I was one of them. And Jasper Willis. Have you heard of him?’ As Reggie and Mary shook their heads, Alice thought, But you will. ‘Several of us. It was up in Birmingham. We have a branch there. And a comrade wrote last week to say he had started a branch in Liverpool. He has four new members. And there’s the branch here, in London.’

Here Mary and Reggie were finally unable to prevent their eyes from meeting. Alice felt a flush of real contempt, like hatred. She said, ‘All political parties have to start, don’t they? They start with only a few members. Well, we’ve only been going a year and we have thirty members here in London. Including the comrades in this house.’ She resisted the temptation to say: And of course there are some next door.

‘And your policy?’ asked Reggie, still in the same careful way that means a person is not going to allow a real discussion to start because his opinion has to be kept in reserve.